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I open my eyes and stare into two blue ones.

My body goes rigid. Pestilence’s face is only inches from mine, and the rest of him is pressed against me. The edges of sleep cling to his expression, and his hair is mussed. It pains me, how attractive I find that.

Unlike me, the horseman doesn’t look surprised to find us so close. He watches me, his gaze both wary and fascinated. Slowly, he releases me.

Kissing, snuggling, and now sleeping together.

Moving awfully fast, Burns.

Technically, this isn’t the first time we’ve slept together. There was that instance back when I was hypothermic.

Feeling somewhat reassured, I push myself out of his arms and run a hand through my wavy brown hair. I don’t look at him as I collect myself, but damnit, I can feel his presence all around me.

Got to get out of this tent.

Shoving on my boots, I slip out of the small space without giving the horseman another look.

Outside, the sun sits high in the sky.

So much for leaving at first light …

The tent flaps open behind me, and the horseman comes striding out. His mouth is set in a grim line, and his eyes are sad when they meet mine. The monster that is my horseman is a lonely, melancholy being.

He grabs his armor and begins strapping it on, moving away from me, towards where Trixie waits.

“Come, Sara,” he calls over his shoulder, “The hour of our departure grows late.”

I glance back at our tent, realizing that he doesn’t mean to take any of our unpacked supplies with him. So I hurry to grab what few things I can’t bear to part with and head after him.

He doesn’t look at me as he slings on his bow and quiver. Nor as I stow away the items I grabbed from our camp. Nor even as he hoists me onto Trixie.

He won’t acknowledge me just as I didn’t want to acknowledge him when I fled the tent. I’m getting a taste of my own medicine, and it’s driving me insane. There’s so much reassurance and connection in a look. Having him withhold it only makes me want it all the more.

“You’re sure we shouldn’t pack the tent?” I ask, throwing one final look at the thing. It looks so lonely next to the remains of our fire. There’s a chance we’ll still be in the middle of nowhere when we stop later today.

Pestilence follows my gaze, giving it a black look. “We won’t be needing it again. Tonight we’ll find a house to sleep in—or we won’t sleep at all.”

There’s more thanone way to hurt a person. This time I didn’t have to shoot the horseman or light him on fire to cause him pain. All I had to do was act like last night was a mistake.

And was it?

Iwantit to be a mistake, and Lord knows I feel bad right now, but not because I kissed the horseman. Or because I snuggled with him. I feel like crap right now because he’sstillgiving me the same silent treatment hours later, and it’s freakingworking.

Driving me mad.

I’ve already told him random stories from my childhood, like the time I chipped my tooth because I literally tripped over my own shoelace, or about how my friends and I had an annual tradition of jumping into Cheakamus Lake as soon as the ice melted from it. I even admitted to him how I developed stage fright. (I fell in front of myentiremiddle school class as I walked up to the podium—I couldn’t get a word out after that.)

He didn’t react to a single one, though I know he was listening raptly by the way his hand would tense and relax as it gripped me.

So I try poetry for a change.

“‘Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary, …’” I begin, quoting Poe’s “The Raven.” I recite the whole poem, and again, I can tell just by the way Pestilence holds himself that he’s listening to me.

But like my stories, he says nothing after I finish reciting it.

I move from “The Raven” toHamlet. “‘To be or not to be, that is the question …’”

I quote the play for as long as I can, but eventually, the lines get jumbled in my mind and I have to abandon the soliloquy.